I've been doing a lot of reflective thought because I do not want to repeat how I felt for a large part of 2014. I was exhausted and hopeless however exceedingly blessed but there were some moments of despair. For what? Why? Mostly because I'm in a massive transition period and it has been a challenge for me to cope with the changes. I see this coming year as a Mulligan. Rather than focus on the details, I'm going to focus on the big picture for 2015. I'm not going to make a list of changes that include exercise, love more, appreciate my life more, blah, blah, blah... I want to know what one thing spread over my entire life can be done to make 2015 better than 2014...

So I asked myself... What one word or phrase will I use to describe 2015? "Abundant Opportunity". I plan on keeping a jar and each time I take on a great opportunity, I'm going to write it down and place it in the jar. I want to look back when the year is over and see if I took on all of these challenges to evaluate my own fearlessness. I say I take risks, but do I really take risks? Do I really put myself out there? Do I really take chances? Do I go out on a limb and get the fruit or do I kind of do it and watch the fruit turn to wine? I'm going to measure that this year.

It's that time of year when people start promising things to themselves that they forgot they said come March. Yep, it's New Year's Resolution Time! I don't often make resolutions because 1.) I think that you can resolve to change your life at any point in the calendar; 2.) I am forgetful.

The beautifully confusing thing about life is that we are always in transition. Growth and improvement cannot occur where there is no change. Transitions and positive growth are often painful, uncomfortable, challenging and uncertain. We are all on this unlimited mountain-plateau climb. We struggle up the "mountain" to get to the top only to plateau and look up to see that there is more struggle to the top. It's scary, that's why most people quit or don't even try to improve in the first place. But we can't escape growth. It's always happening and it's always there. Whether we are physically growing, emotionally growing or psychologically improving something awesome yet transitional is occurring in our lives to help make it better and to help us learn how to be better next time. So we may as well just give in to the pain and go with it.

I've been grappling with this for some time now. With a majority of my kids in pretty good public schools I think about what they will learn over the course of their 13 year journey and I think about how much of it is actually important for their survival as a person. Not much of it. School is total fucking bullshit and I'll never tell them. I'll keep this secret and let them figure it out later in adulthood like most other people do. What did I learn? I got more out of the relationships built with teachers, mentor and coaches. I learned more from extra-curricular activities like athletic teams, choir, band, volunteering and other endeavors than I got from the actual curriculum itself. I've grappled with the internal struggle of wanting a straight A student who has the pick of the litter at college time to the fully developed B/C student who experiences life and is less stressed out. Being the former I can't say I really wish that for my children.

I had your typical All-American free K-12 education. Nothing fancy, nothing shiny; pretty much a standard for what you think of as a normal public school rearing that encompasses the decade of the 90s. Complete with the first wave of standardized testing, we had your basic tracking system coupled with a dwindling vocational program that served the applicable needs of the blue collar community I loved.

November has been a testament to my will to survive. It's been a trying month balancing school and work and I've unfortunately found myself to be filled with more grief than gratitude. Not my style. Giving Tuesday came right on time. I was overly focused on how I was going to build out some content for my job during most of Giving Tuesday that I literally lost site of what the opportunity could mean for my children. What does something like Giving Tuesday mean for kids? How can we use the opportunity to optimize our attitude of gratitude?